TWO BOOKS ON FOX-HUNTING.* IT is something of an achievement
to discover a classic of sport that needs reprinting, and Lord Willoughby de Broke is to be congratulated on an admirable edition of Colonel Cook's Observations on Hunting,' written in the days of Waterloo. Colonel Cook hitherto has lacked his vales sacer, and Lord Willoughby ex Broke's introduction to this book places him in his proper niche in the annals of fox-hunting. He was born in 1772, and though he does not seem to have come of a sporting family, fox-hunting at an early age became the passion of his life. His first Mastership was in the Thurlow country in 1800, but it was in 1808 that his real days began, when he took his own pack of hounds to Essex and hunted them over the Roothings. It was here that he set himself in the front rank of huntsmen, and, as his editor of to-day remarks, a modern Master of Hounds might well study every word of the book he made out of his experience. Three great principles he laid down : first, that "blood is so necessary to a pack of foxhounds that if you are long without it you cannot expect sport ; many say that the art of fox- hunting is keeping your pack in blood." Second, "whatever you do, never turn out a bagman ; it is injurious to your hounds ; makes them wild and unsteady." Third, that
next to turning out bagmen, lifting of hounds is the most prejudicial. They should seldom be taken off their noses.'"
• (1) Observations on Fox-hunting. By Colonel Cook. Edited, with an Introduction, by Lord WIlloaghby do Broke. London : Arnold. 1218. net.]—(2) Foxes, Fox- Jamul& and Fox-hunting. By Richard Clapham. With an Introduction by Lord
illoughby de Broke. London : Heath Cranton. 125s. net.]
And with what excellent arguments in sound, sinewy English he supports his advice ! Hounds will not work when they are out of blood, and for that reason he allows that digging may be legitimate on occasion, though he does not like the business.
As to " bagmen," he has a good story of a fox reluctantly permitted by the Master to be turned down in a covert, and duly hunted and killed, only to be refused by the hounds, who
would not eat him. " ' Now, Sir,' said his lordship to the farmer, 'you have deceived the huntsmen and the field, but you cannot deceive my hounds.'"
Lord Willoughby de Broke adds an interesting page to the never-ending comparison of the pace of foxhounds, ancient and modern. He thinks that though it would be true to say that hounds in the reign of George V. are faster than they were in the days of Queen Anne, he would be a bold man who should claim that they are faster than in the days of Mr.
Osbaldiston, or before him Mr. Hugo Meynell and Mr. John Smith Barry. After all, Mr. Smith Barry's Bluecap and Wanton, trained on a diet of milk, oatmeal and boiled sheeps'- trotters, beat Mr. Meynell's hounds, fed entirely on legs of mutton, in a race at Newmarket, running four miles in less than ten minutes. And that was in 1762.
Mr. Clapham would probably be the first to disclaim having written a complete treatise of fox-hunting. He has written in it nothing of horses. But he has some good chapters on Lakeland hunting and Fell packs, his natural history is sound, he has much to say that is worth reading about walking and training hounds, and he can tell a good story. There is a grim quiet in the tale of the keen fox-hunter who had crawled into an earth to collar a fox which had gone to ground. "Has ta gitten hod ? " one of his companions asked, holding him by the heel. " 'Aye,' came the muffled answer, 'we're baith gitten hod.'" We like, too, Mr. Clapham's enthusiasm for his sport in the Fells as opposed to the fashionable hunting of the Shires, where, as he suggests, the field mostly hunt to ride and could not tell you the name of a hound in the pack. In the Fells the dalesmen go out to hunt, and they know the names and the characters of every hound. And it is Mr. Clapham's knowledge of the working capacities of Lakeland hounds that leads him to what is the best chapter in the book, so far as it is applicable to hunting in general, and that is his condemnation of the influence of show-bench standards on the breeding of hounds. Lord Willoughby de Broke, in his introduction, differs in some points from Mr. Clapham, but it is interesting to find that he agrees with him that it is a mistake to breed mainly for size and bone, and that he seems to admit, too, that the bench at Peterborough and elsewhere may have created a false standard in foxhounds, just as it has indubitably done with other animals. The show-bench has bred all the work out of fox-terriers, and the kind of dog that wins prizes to-day is useless for the purpose for which the breed exists, which is to go up to a fox that has gone to ground. And though it would be an exaggeration to say that Peterborough breeds bad hounds, it is undeniable that the points which count there are not the points for which hounds were bred in the days of Bluecap, or, to come to a later date, the Brocldesby Rallywood, entered in 1843. Peter- borough to-day looks for heavy bone below the knee, short pasterns and bunched, club-like feet—a shape unlike anything that Nature has provided for its fastest, strongest and lithest animals, unlike the old type of hound used in the Shires, and unlike the hounds which do best with the hard work and exacting conditions of Fell packs. It may be that this dis- tortion of type will disappear, as do other fashions ; mean- while, Mr. Clapham's well-reasoned pages form a protest which has long needed making.
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